Smugglers held as boat sinks, drowning 50
Published
Ankara - Turkish authorities said on Thursday they had captured seven people in connection with the weekend sinking of a boat carrying scores of illegal migrants in stormy waters off Turkey's southwestern coast.
Only one migrant, an Iranian named Hussein Dadhkani, survived the shipwreck, which has again highlighted the problem of illegal human smuggling from Turkey's long coastline to neighbouring Greece and other European Union countries.
In a statement faxed to Reuters, Huseyin Aksoy, governor of Mugla, a town near the scene of the sinking, said the seven men detained included four Turks and three Afghan citizens.
Two Iranians and another Turk were still being sought by police, the statement said.
The authorities confiscated a boat and $18 000 from the bank account of the gang's ringleader, named as Mesut Gerdan. Gerdan has been responsible for at least three similar cases of human trafficking in the past, it said.
The Sabah newspaper said Gerdan, a former soldier who has also worked for the coastguard, served an eight-month prison sentence for a previous case of human smuggling and was only freed six months ago.
Aksoy's statement said Gerdan had been on the boat with the migrants but had left before the storm. Sabah said police tracked him down after he rang them to say the boat was in trouble.
Aksoy said there had been a total of 53 people on the boat, not 70 as earlier reported. They included 17 Afghans, 17 Iranians, two Iraqis, nine Tunisians, seven Jordanians and one Turk. Among them were one woman and a 13-year-old girl.
Each passenger had paid the smugglers $2 000 for the journey, the statement said. Sabah said there had been only 16 life jackets on board the boat.
Each year thousands of migrants mainly from eastern Turkey, Iran and Iraq try to enter the EU on small boats from Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. Many are caught, some get through and an unknown number drown. - Reuters